


Only Take What You Can Carry

by seperis



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-18
Updated: 2010-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seperis/pseuds/seperis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things to do in New Mexico when you're lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Take What You Can Carry

**Author's Note:**

> Well. I mean, I guess I could just build astolat a shrine and make my life easier, but instead, I just make offerings of porn. As one does. Thanks to cathalin for early reading and jamesinboots for going over it all again and being fanfic-posting xanax. Title from Snow Patrols' _If There's a Rocket, Tie Me to It_.

**Now**

Adam likes to talk about the life-changing effects of narcotics, the story told so often it's almost like listening to a fairy tale now, misty-edge and faintly unreal. Sleep deprivation may not be a narcotic, but it sure has the some common elements, which is the only explanation Kris has for a flat tire fifteen hours from LA and somewhere not Las Cruces, New Mexico, no matter what the GPS says.

He's still staring at the tire when Adam deigns to get his ass out of the car, because there's only so much time you can convincingly fake sleep and Adam wasn't convincing when they weren't stopped on the side of a road that isn't I-10 and there was actual air conditioning. Kris figures if nothing else, the power of a New Mexico summer battling a flat iron will do the trick, and Kris is pretty sure there's not enough product in the world to combat ninety percent humidity.

"So." Adam looks at the tire like he looks at broken coffee pots and flannel worn without irony. "We have a spare."

"I know." Existential crises shouldn't happen on obscure farm roads, but he's never had an actual one, so what the hell does he know? "I'm thinking."

"About how to change a tire?"

Kris wants to glare, but they're kind of beyond glaring at this point. "I know how to change a tire." Looking up, Kris wishes Adam would at least pretend to be uncomfortable, but he doesn't bother. Kris wishes viciously the sweat would smudge his eyeliner. Just a little.

The jack is where Kris put it, under the car and ready for lifting, and he's holding the wrench like it's his last great hope for sanity, sticky and sliding against his palm and his skin will smell of hot metal for hours now. The tire is right behind him. He even remembers crouching, ready to shout at Adam to get out already so he can get this over with, and he's not sure how long its been, but apparently, it's been a while.

"It's hot," Kris says finally, putting the wrench to the first nut, fingers sliding on the metal before he can get a grip. Dropping it, he wipes his palms on his jeans.

"I'll do it." Kris gives him an incredulous look. "What? You think I can't change a tire?"

To be honest, Kris can't say he's ever had an opinion on Adam's relationship with automobile maintenance. "More that you'd get pissed if you chipped your nails," Kris answers honestly. Maybe he _is_ high after all: three hours of Adam patiently painting them against his knee, foot braced against the dashboard and the smell of OPI filling the car even with all the windows open.

Adam gives his fingers a regretful look, then kicks his knee. "Granted. Now move."

Pushing a hand against the scraggly grass, Kris straightens, fighting the urge to groan at the pop in his back. He'd taken the last seven hours and refused every offer to switch. Right now, he can't remember why he thought that was a good idea. It's not that Adam's a bad driver; Kris just isn't used to not being behind the wheel. "I can--"

Adam doesn't bother listening, which is just as well; Kris has no idea how he would have finished that sentence. Retreating a few steps, he sits down on grass only barely cooled from a long day beneath the glare of the early summer sun. The world is flat fields that seem to go on forever, quiet like even the bugs are feeling less than inspired in this kind of weather. Kris doesn't think he's ever really believed a night could be improved by a coyote howling before, but he'd take it; even the sound of the jack is swallowed by the emptiness around them.

"We could have flown," Kris starts; it's a rote argument, and as an attempt at conversation, it works about as well as he expected. Because it's not the destination, it's the journey, there should be more smelling of roses, and _seriously, you never did a roadtrip in college? Baby, we have to fix that._

He's _done_ roadtrips, okay, and if tour isn't an extended roadtrip itself, what the hell _is_ it, but by then it was too way late; Adam had a car outside (like he'd been just _waiting_ for a random afternoon conversation about What Kris Did in College Subsection Crazy Shit to come up) and two passes to South by Southwest were waiting on the seat with two tickets for a very nice, four hour flight across the country, air conditioned and with snacks. Somewhere, there are two people really happy about being unexpectedly upgraded, which is possibly the only good thing to come out of this.

Pulling his knees to his chest, Kris half-watches Adam go about tire changing and half-wonders if there's any beef jerky left. "You need help?" he asks, and tries to sound like he means it.

Adam tosses him a grin. "I love you're saying that without even pretending like you're going to get up."

"Drove for _seven hours_," Kris answers a little plaintively.

"Offered to change three times," Adam sing-songs back in the key of asshole and loosens the last nut before jacking the car up further. It's almost hypnotic, in a weird way, like Adam's working on some internal beat, something in three four and fairly slow. Blinking the sweat from his eyes, Kris finds himself humming, looking for a song to match and wondering if he may need to write one.

The faint sound of the jack letting loose and the car reacquainting itself with earth isn't enough to get his attention; Adam pushing a boot between his feet and holding out his hand is. Kris squints up at him, then takes out the keys.

"Yes, those too, thank you," Adam says, taking the keys before long fingers wrap around his wrist and pull him unexpectedly to his feet. Stumbling a little, Kris catches himself against Adam's chest and doesn't pull away nearly fast enough. He's always been bad at that. "You ready?"

It's six hours to Austin. "Okay, so I get this is a break in the rules of roadtripdom you made up--"

"Classic and ancient rules honored by millions of stoned people worldwide--"

"--but if I don't get a break from that car, I really won't be responsible for my actions." He's hazy on what those actions might be, but he's pretty sure they'll be dire. They might involve nail polish. "What time is it anyway?"

"Ten?" Adam hazards, because his watch is on the hand holding Kris' wrist and currently involved with pulling Kris to the car despite the fact Kris is leaving a small trail in the dirt behind them. "Look, we'll check the GPS--"

"It says we're in Las Cruces," Kris answers as he's deposited in the passenger seat, moving his legs in only when Adam's light kicking is in danger of escalating.

Adam closes the door before Kris can continue; leaning back against the seat, Kris breathes in the stuffy-hot air of the car until Adam gets in and abruptly, there's air conditioning and Kris can kind of forgive even GPS now that he has that. Closing his eyes, he fumbles on his seat belt as the car swerves back onto the road. "You sure you want to stop?"

Kris turns his head on the neck rest and half-opens his eyes--that's all the effort he can manage--and tries to stare his desperation. "Yes."

Adam sighs. He can just deal with it.

* * *

Kris can't really trace at this point where the GPS went wrong; it was probably around the time Adam took off his sunglasses and stared out the window, eyebrows drawn together sharply at the dusk-shrouded terrain and a "Hey, we're not on the highway."

They passed three gas stations and a group of buildings that might have been a town before Kris had to admit that stopping for directions--or hell, a location--probably was in fact a good idea. Adam's "So straight guys really don't ask for directions?" all wide-eyed and curious like a well-accessoried Jane Goodall studying the habits of heterosexual southerners in their natural habitat, though, had added that last hour before Kris was willing to say out loud that yeah, they were lost.

From the way their cellphones are acting, Kris might have driven them straight into a Stephen King short story. The impression isn't lessened when they stop, either; Kris opens his eyes on a motel that bears a startling resemblance to the setting of at least four horror movies. He really, honestly to God wants to care, but he wants to be prone on a non-dirt, not-upholstery, not-moving surface so much more, so much that he doesn't even wonder how the owner (manager, person who gives keys and takes money) had reacted when six-feet-something of glittery rockstar pretending to be dressed down in jeans and failing fabulously had materialized in front of him (her?) asking for a room for the night.

There's a lot of things Adam is, but unmemorable isn't ever going to be one of them. Kris hopes the money the guy gets from TMZ buys some better pillows. He's several hours past sleepy and about a hundred miles beyond wired; turning his head on the flat pillow and ignoring the faint smell of something he cannot bring himself to identify, Kris watches Adam wander around doing Adam-things that involve removing his boots and verifying the integrity of his nail polish with a dissatisfied frown and a dive toward the suitcase that holds an entire cosmetic counter compartmentalized by frequency of use and possibly, ease of application. Adam's the only human being Kris has ever met, male or female, who can manage liquid eyeliner in a moving car while carrying on a conversation and dramatically ignoring the ringing of their phones under the backseat.

He emerges some time later, triumphant with acetone and tiny cotton pads, humming to himself as he edges a knee onto the bed and against Kris' side. Rolling over onto his stomach, Kris feels chill air swipe goosebumps across the bare skin of his back, shirt rucked up beneath him in a way that is probably uncomfortable, but he can't really remember how to care. Turning his head on the pillow, Kris watches Adam settle against the headboard, pillow smashed into shapelessness against the small of his back, one leg pulled up as he contemplates the damage inflicted by manual labor, long, pale fingers spread over his knee.

"Not too bad," Adam says after a moment, like he's trying to assuage Kris' non-existent guilt for his part in it all. "Just a quick touch up. Hold still."

Kris is about four thoughts behind what that's supposed to mean, so his shirt is pushed up around his neck and cool glass is balanced precariously on his back before he thinks to protest, but talking would require moving and he doesn't really want his back stained in glittering purple all that much. Still humming, Adam methodically fixes each smudge with hands steady enough to do brain surgery, which is kind of unfair, because he's been awake as long as Kris and it's not reasonable or sane that he's not on the verge of collapse.

Then again, he's never associated either word with Adam, so the point may be moot.

It's familiar, like living together all over again, and Kris is lulled by the normality of it all, enough that he doesn't even raise an eyebrow when Adam looks at him speculatively while his nails dry. "Still awake?"

"Not really?" Kris yawns (carefully; the bottle shifts against his skin) and waits for Adam to put it up and find something else to entertain himself with. "Probably not."

"Hmm." Shifting fluidly to cross-legged ease, Adam reaches for Kris' hand and not the bottle; Kris summons just enough interest to look a question. "This," he says, spreading Kris' fingers over the age-soft denim covering his knee and picking up the bottle, "is where I take advantage of your exhaustion."

Kris nods dreamily, watching as Adam rearranges his fingers to his satisfaction and unscrews the cap, the tiny brush glinting even in the faint yellow light coming from the small lamp on the bedside table. More carefully than he ever does this to himself, Adam strokes vivid color over his thumbnail, his palm pressing lightly on Kris' wrist in the unlikely event Kris has some intention of moving. If he closes his eyes, Kris can imagine he can feel each languorous stroke of the brush, long wide strips for the center, shorter bordering his skin. When he's done, he picks up the bottle and waits for Kris to turn over and surrender his other hand, the bottle resting low on his belly, trembling with every half-stuttered breath.

"Turn over," Adam says finally, the bottle relocated to safer territory; it's not easy to do with two hands of wet nails, but Kris fumbles himself belly-down with a sigh, Adam's fingers wrapped warm and tight around his wrists as he arranges them on the pillow above Kris' head. "I'll do the second coat when they dry."

"Mmkay." He wishes he'd taken off his shirt; the air conditioner is making the heat bearable, but only just. Jeans, too. Pressing his toes into the mattress, Kris drifts for a while, emerging when Adam wanders off, relaxing only when the bed shifts and Adam's knee presses reassurance against his side.

Circa third coat, Kris squints his watch into coherence; if they leave now, they may still make the first day. Adam stares his hand back into position on the pillow before vanishing into the bathroom; Kris rubs damp palms against the cotton pillowcase, eyes shut against the faint grey light slipping between the plastic blinds. He's half-awake when he hears the bathroom door open, the nearly inaudible pad of feet across the faded carpet, the rustle of the curtains blocking out the coming morning, the lamp flickering off.

"Not quite dry yet," Adam murmurs, settling back beside him, breath startling against Kris' ear. "Sit up."

Kris opens his eyes just long enough to keep his balance, drawing his legs up and sitting back on his heels, Adam's fingers guiding his hands out of danger above his head before reaching for the hem of his shirt. Fingernails scratch brief lines of heat over his belly, and he shivers a little as Adam goes up on his knees to ease his hands free of sweat-damp cotton, hot bare skin along his side that Kris leans into without thought. Adam's hand on his back urges him off his heels, and he watches with detached curiosity as Adam unfastens his jeans one-handed, easing them down his hips, rolling him unresistingly onto his back as Kris presses his palms against he headboard and shivers at the feel of Adam's hands following the denim down his legs.

He thinks about opening his eyes when he feels Adam crawl back up the length of his body, knees settling on either side of his hips. "I think they're dry now."

Kris flexes his fingers against the particleboard, aware of a vague ache in his arms as he draws them back down, brushing his thumb curiously over the unfamiliar, slick surface of each nail. "We're going to be late," Kris says and almost manages to sound like he cares.

A ghost of a touch against his mouth stops that thought before it can go anywhere he wants to follow. "Go to sleep already," Adam answers, sounding more amused than anyone should when they're seeing dawn from the wrong side twice in two days. It's good advice, but it makes Adam move, which Kris likes a whole lot less. He doesn't realize he's rubbing the smooth surface of his nails on the bed until Adam's fingers slide between his, murmuring, "Seriously, _sleep_," and yeah, maybe he will after all.

* * *

**Before**

There's an entire notebook sitting on the counter between them; Kris gives up trying to explain his feelings of rejection by the entire paper industry when it starts to sound like some kind of specialized break with reality as Adam thumbs through the pages, reading half-completed lyrics and humming snatches of almost-melody. "So how long have you been working on this again?"

Kris doesn't look up from his comfortable position face first on solid granite and wonders why the hell Adam thinks he's capable of anything as complicated as counting. "A week? Maybe?"

"One song."

Kris shuts his eyes tight and pretends it's normal to have seventy-something pages illustrating his entire career is a weird fluke and he's actually shitty at this whole songwriting thing. "You want to rub that in a little more?"

"Possibly." To his credit, Adam thinks about it. "No. Maybe later, though."

Kris takes what he can get. "Thanks."

"Anytime." A plate pushes itself beneath his elbow, because Adam's having some kind of love affair with domesticity and channeling several worried mothers with strangely edible results. It's not like Kris didn't think Adam could cook; it's just theoretical understanding of the possibility doesn't equal Adam, a kitchen, and _The Joy of Cooking_ occupying the same space at the same time in the real world. Like bending physics, or something. Luckily, it's all food that can be transported by fingers and Kris doesn't even have to lift his head to eat. Faintly, he can hear Adam rifling through the pages again, breathing the lyrics while tapping the rhythm out on the back of Kris' neck in a really useless attempt to make him sit up and act like a normal human being.

LA was supposed to _help_, and while sure, there's five more pages than there were when he stepped off the plane, by no stretch of anyone's imagination is this an improvement.

The fingers pause abruptly, resting heavily against his skin; it's annoying enough that Kris almost asks Adam why he stopped, then realizes he has no idea how to string the words together in a way that would make any kind of rational sense. The touch lingers, sliding to rest against his collar before pulling away, and Kris picks up something vegetable shaped to avoid the potential of asking anyway.

Adam leans both elbows on the counter, the notebook between his arms; Kris can't figure out his expression, but he feels like he should. "Huh."

Craning his neck to see the page, Kris gropes blindly for the plate. "What?"

"Nothing." Adam lets out a breath, straightening . "Where are you staying?"

Kris tries and fails to remember more than the vague impression of heavy wood and neutral-toned carpet; there might have been a fountain. He may need to call the cab company and find the cabbie to get directions, since he's pretty sure that's how he got here. "Over at--"

Adam looks up, mouth curving in a slight smile. "Wrong answer."

"Here?"

"Good boy. Go take a nap." When Kris reaches for the notebook, Adam snatches it up with a frown. "Good try, honey, but no." Reaching out, his thumb traces a wide circle beneath Kris' eye, speculative. "Though I have some concealer that works miracles--"

"And sleep it is." All at once, Kris feels the last few days like a weight, making every bone feel impossibly heavy. After carefully placing the notebook a length of countertop beyond Kris' best desperate lunge, Adam's hand settles at the small of his back, guiding him away from temptation and toward potentially his first uninterrupted sleep in a week. "I don't need to be tucked in here."

Adam leans against him, snickering against his temple. "Who said that part's just for you?"

* * *

Adam flirts reflexively, like breathing, like singing, and he escalates without warning like a neverending game of psuedosexual verbal chicken. If flirting was the equivalent of running, Adam's a _marathon_. It can be light and funny, or hilariously pointed, and sometimes serious, but beneath it is always the same shy pleasure, because in the end, it's fun, and that's the part he wants everyone to love like he does.

A marathon, right--it's a fairly accurate description of their first couple of days, come to think, before Adam stopped trying to shock him into his potential inner asshole and picked up his guitar, fingers settling tentatively on the strings. Kris had put down his book and took a breath to hide his smile, crawling to the end of the bed and collapsing on his stomach, realizing how closely Adam must have been watching him to imitate the crook of his fingers, the slope of the body against his chest, green-tipped fingers tracing along the edge of the guitar in an unconscious caress, like he can feel the music in it even when it's silent.

After a few moments of ghosting over the strings, Adam carefully sets the guitar aside, and maybe for the first time since they met, Kris think he's seeing the musician and not the proto-rockstar in waiting. Curling his arms under his head, Kris waits for Adam to decide to notice he's watching.

Then, he wanted to say, _I'd never hurt you._ Now he's glad he didn't. As it turns out, it was a lie long before he would have said the words.

* * *

Adam isn't a morning person; that's a law of nature and possibly a commandant that got lost on the way down the mountain. Morning is a fluid state, however, not limited to petty things like immutable time and the movements of the sun; it's a state of being lasting from the moment Adam realizes he has to get up and well into a higher state of caffeination. Unlike Adam and automobiles, Kris lives up close and personal with Adam's relationship with coffee.

Kris isn't either, but he's better at faking it than Adam is, and Kris learned early on to claim what ground he could while the claming was good. Except right now, Adam's curiously drawing lines up his back with the tips of his nails and morning (in fluid form) can fuck itself.

Stretching slightly, Kris feels Adam's fingers still, then start again, abandoning lines for esoteric shapes that Kris tries to identify by feel. Pulling one half-numb hand from under his head, Kris smells the fainted hint of nail polish and looks down at his fingers like a stranger's in the (somewhat) brighter room. The tips are callused from strings, skin hardened and shading darker, but the blunt-cut fingernails he only notices under duress belong to someone else entirely, the glossy surface deepening to the color of a day-old bruise. Stretching his hand on the pillow beside him, Kris traces the faded edges with his eyes, nail-tips worn dull after only hours, and most of them sleeping. "Did I scratch you?"

Adam hesitates, pushing his nails into Kris back as if to mark where he left off. "That's really not the question I expected."

Kris turns his head enough to bring Adam into view. It's bright enough to note Adam's dressed, eyes lined in smoky grey with a hint of purple shimmering behind the sweep of black lashes, and he's attempted low-key in black skinny jeans and plum under leather, which is subtle, for Adam, but not so much for anyone who sees him. Kris regrets he missed it; Adam getting dressed is performance art, the best kind, the kind that's not a performance at all.

Kris holds up his hand, wriggling his fingers. "The tips," he explains as Adam stretches along his back, chin digging into his shoulder, fingers curling around his palm and bringing his hand closer.

"Should have added a top coat," he says thoughtfully. Kris watches Adam's fingers twining through his a little dizzily; with the polish, he's not entirely sure which are his anymore. "Now, the question you should have asked….?"

It's not even a trick question, but there are enough to fill Kris' head so full none can get out; Kris waits until Adam looks at him and raises his eyebrows like he expects whatever answer is coming.

"I know where we are."

Kris tries to roll over and gets exactly nowhere, and Adam just settles himself more comfortably. The fact he isn't humming contentment is worrying; Kris can feel he wants to. "Where?"

"I want to know more about the mysteries of straight men and directions," Adam says against his ear, nose brushing the hypersensitive skin behind it. "Does it drain away testosterone? Do something unfortunate to your palms? Seriously, I want to know."

"Stereotypes are destructive," Kris manages with some semblance of authority.

"Except when I'm sleeping with one. Trust me, then, the hilarity never really ends." Kris processes the first sentence and almost stops altogether, but Adam continues. "What I don't know is how we got here, and for a surprise, the very nice people who sold me coffee down the road are working off the theory that people from LA are idiots. It's not like I can disagree, considering."

"Adam."

For a shocking second, Adam's lips are pressed against his skin and Kris suddenly doesn't care where they are. Then, like it never happened (like it's always happened, like it will happen again), Adam murmurs, "We're on county road twelve."

The road, Kris has to admit, had a county-like feel to it. The potholes should have been an indicator. "And we are--"

"There. On it."

"Town?"

"That's what I said, and no, there's not one. It's like--this, and a convenience store and like, a farm and some cows." Adam pauses meditatively. "Or sheep. They're pretty far away."

For lack of anything better to do, Kris buries his head in the pillow. "This isn't my fault."

"I'll give you the GPS if you admit three hours and seventeen minutes before the tire--and yeah, I _so_ counted--you should have said…" Adam trails off expectantly.

Kris doesn't even fight it. "Yes, Adam, I will stop and ask for directions."

"Beautiful." Abruptly, Adam drops to the bed beside him. "And? Come on, baby."

"Next time, we're totally flying."

Adam's eyes narrow with a danger of pouting on the horizon. "Not the answer I was looking for."

"Yeah, but it's the one you're getting," Pushing himself up, Kris sees coffee and delicious packaged sugar in breakfast form and forgets he was attempting to be mad. "I really love you right now."

It slips out so suddenly that Kris has cellophane clinging sticky to his fingers and a mouthful of pastry before he processes what he said; half a cup of coffee while under the shower later (an idea whose time has come) doesn't get him any closer to an answer (or hell, a question), but it does get him clean.

He dries off quickly, feeling the heat already trying to raise new sweat, and as the mirror unfogs, he sees faint trails of purple curling over his back buried in fading red lines too fragile to last beyond a few more hours; he wouldn't have noticed them if he hadn't known to look. He'd washed the darker smudge of Adam's lipstick away, but he can still feel it, hovering beneath his skin like another kind of mark.

"I'm driving," Adam says from some distance from the door, voice pitched to carry, and right, yeah, Kris can't even pretend to be surprised.

* * *

Kris finds his sweatpants buried beneath a pile of slick, butter-soft leather and a collection of loose feathers dyed green shading to pale gold, third closet on the left, like Adam thinks Kris doesn't know the closet system by heart. Picking them up, he pulls them on over his boxers with a faint sense of triumph and decides Adam's immaculate bed is an awesome place to spend serious time contemplating page ninety-five (notebook two) of the song that will never, ever end. Messing up the bed is just a plus, really.

It's also the last place Adam will look for him, which gives him a good forty-five minutes of wallowing before the bed moves and Adam drops on top of him like a particularly enthusiastic cat. Kris assumes by the fact he can't breathe that Adam's late night was not spent in Parcheesi and make-up tips. He's about a hundred times more touchy when he's been laid, skin-hungry. "You're hiding."

Kris kicks one leg up and gets a heel to weakly brush against Adam's thigh. "I love these sweatpants."

"But they look so much better when you're not wearing them."

Kris pushes until Adam lets him roll over, squinting a little. "I can't even tell if you're hitting on me or not."

"To be fair, I'm not sure either." Dropping back on the bed with a bounce, Adam gets the notebook and makes himself comfortable against the pillows, not even bothering to hide his satisfied grin.

_Very_ laid, then. Kris considers stealing the notebook back, then the size of the bed, torn. One promises failure; the other promises mockery of your best friend for being a total slut. Kris has spent most of his puberty-and-beyond male life listening to and trading stories of sexual exploits; Adam's are the first that required a dictionary and active internet connection for definition, context, and occasionally, verification with the help of google and video streams that he will admit he had to use on his deathbed. Because seriously.

It's been a week, and at some point, Kris has to admit to himself this wasn't so much a plan as an inexplicable cry for help and leave Adam to have random sex more conveniently, at home, which apparently Kris' presence inhibits. Kris has tried to start three conversations on the subject, but for some reason, Adam telling him exactly what his tongue was doing and where it was doing it while someone else set up a variety of props in the background is fine, but saying Adam could start doing his frighteningly well-choreographed sexcapades at home as God intended, and Kris will find something to do on the other side of the house is like, _awkward_.

That it doesn't make sense doesn't worry Kris nearly as much as the fact Adam's smile is fading into unreadable all over again, and no matter how many times Kris reads what he wrote, he's can't figure out what Adam's seeing.

"You really have to let me in on the secret," Kris says, climbing up until he's leaning over Adam's bent knees. Showered and scrubbed clean, he's almost frighteningly capable of carrying off innocent bewilderment. His hair is still damp, and Kris has no way to explain how endearing that is.

"It's nothing," Adam says, closing the notebook with a snap. "Maybe you need to take a break from the pre-emo, though; Wentz is not a look that would work for you." Adams' eyes narrow hopefully. "However--"

"No." Fishing his notebook away, Kris looks at it distrustfully; Wentz? "Is it really--"

"No, no," Adam says, instantly soothing, bare foot pushing against Kris' knee. "You're fine, baby. I am just saying, there's a lot of different ways to wear eyeliner, and that's not the one you want to wake up with."

Kris slow blinks his astonishment that he understands the metaphor. "I could rock heroin chic."

"And that," Adam says, pushing off the bed and pulling Kris after him, notebook forgotten, "really calls for ice cream."

"I know what heroin chic _means_," Kris marvels, taking a moment. "I really don't know how to deal with that."

"We'll coordinate the ice cream to existential crises by taste," Adam answers easily. "I'm feeling chocolate mousse and hot fudge; how about you?"

* * *

After all the time Kris spent not-sleeping in beds, on couches, and occasionally, stretched on comfortable rugs, it's kind of amazing that the car seat hits him like valium; he's out before Adam can throw a fit about the available radio channels and mutter about Sirius.

From the pretty much only directions they can get, if they keep going west, they'll end up on I-60 and straight down to Las Cruces. After that, Kris is vague on the details, since the napkin Adam wrote everything down on is slowly disintegrating into blue-smudged oblivion in the unused ashtray. They'd both stared at it for a while, like will alone would bring back what happened once you got south of Las Cruces.

The fact they both have iphones and the coverage now to use them in ways associated with travel isn't something they're discussing. Eventually, they'll have to retrieve them from under the back seat, but Kris isn't feeling all that inspired to try and Adam acts like his isn't usually surgically attached.

Speaking generally, between the two of them, they've probably given the entirety of 19E new and exciting opportunities to define the words "damage control". That either of them live a life that going to a music festival in a fit of sleep-deprived spontaneity is a cause for highly dramatic voicemail, email, and potentially, newspaper headlines, is even more unbelievable than getting lost on county roads in _New Mexico_, and Kris can't really blame himself (okay, he can, sure, but it's not like they're stopping, so whatever) for not processing it.

"So did you ever think, you know, when this started, that at some point, we'd actually like, _become_ divas?" Kris asks, staring at the miles of farmland that will eventually, at some point, turn into civilization and people and more worryingly, _paparazzi_. Just because they don't (really) know where they are doesn't really mean much; media has a sense about this sort of thing.

"I have not had _nearly_ enough coffee to answer that," Adam answers, then pauses, adding uncertainly, "and I'm not a diva."

Kris turns his head with exaggerated slowness to illustrate opinion, it being _bull_ followed by _shit_.

"Maybe a little diva," Adam concedes, fingers tightening on the wheel like denial is the new black. "Diva-lite."

"…you're sticking to that?"

"Until my last breath. Oh, look, cows!"

Adam's right--from this distance, they could be sheep. It's not like Kris knows the agricultural demographics of New Mexico. Could be llamas. Could be emus, for all he knows. Kris sinks further into the seat and tries to fall back into the comfortable gloss of half-sleep, rippling in and out of time like that's any solution to the lack of a problem to deal with. Kris _likes_ problems, likes to solve them, too, but it works so much better if they're articulated. Or exist, even.

The air conditioner keeps the car arctic, but Kris could still sweat to the memories of slick-sticky heat and driving hours past anything sane or adult or hey, human. Keeping his eyes closed, Kris tries to think of nothing, head pressed to the body-warm glass and listening to Adam hum, like he does when he thinks Kris isn't paying attention. It's not a melody, not exactly; Bob Dylan by way of Shakira, maybe, changing the beat every three measures or falling into a time signature that hasn't been created yet, like he's having a style crisis of musical faith. Having seen Adam's externalized debate on the merit of one belt over another, it's as typical as it is soothing. It's not that Adam's indecisive; he just likes to be _right_.

"I'm just saying," Kris says, because the thought was important, or at least, was there, so why not continue it, _this is not the person I saw myself being_, but it never gets farther than his thoughts. One who gets lost in the great American Midwest and wears nail polish and ends up in a car with a genuine force of nature, the kind you read about in books and think _so not realistic_, but maybe you hope a little that you're wrong. Because people that live like that should exist, they _should_, the world can't be just people who only think they do.

"Saying what?"

Dammit. Kris opens his eyes and looks at a universal anomaly less than a foot of upholstery away. "I'm glad I met you."

Adam swerves, just a little. "_That's_ what you were working up to?"

Kris thinks about it. "Yeah. I think it was." Straightening, Kris lifts a foot and braces it against the dashboard and tries to think like people who do things because they want to and not because they just happen and they happen to be in the way. "I'm starving. Is there any beef jerky left?"

* * *

Adam's feelings about ice cream are complicated and unfathomable, but some of them have to involve "does this work with hot fudge?". Though off the top of his head, Kris can't imagine an ice cream that requires a caveat of "no fudge", so maybe he's overthinking it. With the sweats vanished again (not third closet, not a curve ball of second closet, not near the laundry, not in the bathroom), Kris is in his oldest pajama bottoms, faded and worn through the knee and inappropriate for anyone who isn't married to him and legally forced to look at him to deal with and a t-shirt that from the size isn't actually his, trying to find the ungodly deliciousness of fudge ripple and failing.

Sitting back on his heels, Kris stares at the freezer, unable to articulate the horror of wanting to just sit back and cry for a while. It's good ice cream, which might justify it, but there's cookie dough too, and he can't remember a point in his life that he's ever felt so utterly screwed by the universe.

Giving up, Kris leans back against the kitchen island and pulls his knees up enough to potentially kick the fridge shut and see if that helps. The sound of footsteps coming toward him is a surprise; he hasn't seen Adam in more than glimpses for two days, and from the state of the closet, he'd been in a mood. A go-somewhere-glittery-and-stocked-with-hot-guys-who-used-to-be-gymnasts-slash-contortinists type of mood, which is the usual reaction to a day where Adam has to meet with a lot of people who irritate him to depression and wear unimaginatively colored ties.

Bare feet flashing three-day old silver nudge against his ankle while Adam takes stock of the patheticness of Kris' life. "Are you--crying in front of the freezer?" He sounds uneasy, like perhaps he realizes that being Kris Allen's friend also involves dealing with Kris' long-repressed but still functional fourteen year old self who had kept a journal (not a diary, for the love of God, not a _diary_) and sometimes wrote things like, "My parents don't understand me and omg Katy let me touch her boob!" which--well, that wasn't when he was fourteen, maybe sixteen, fine, he deals with it the only way he knows how.

"No," Kris answers, stretching to hide the fact he's surreptitiously wiping his eyes.

"I've run out of ways to make fun of you, so," Adam holds the fudge ripple, dripping condensation onto Kris's lap just out of reach, "you want?"

"God, yes." Looking up, Kris checks himself at the familiar grey fabric that's about three sizes too small stretched long over thighs and knee and goes back south to stare at the good four inches of exposed ankle and leg. "Holy shit," Kris realizes in a burst of understanding, "you want my sweatpants. To like, keep. You _envy me my sweatpants_."

Adam plucks at the stretched waist with a decided lack of shame. "I get what you see in them." Turning away, he picks out an extra spoon and shuts the drawer with swing of his hip. "You coming?"

Since he's holding the fudge ripple, yeah. Scrambling to his feet, Kris does inventory as Adam leans against the counter and lets him look him over. Reaching out, Kris traces a thumb against the reddened scrape of stubble burn across the tender skin just beneath Adam's jaw and then pulls away. "I thought you'd be out."

"I was." Which is obvious--Adam hadn't done anything more complicated than change clothes--and Kris is reminded suddenly that Adam would share almost anything, but not this part, not really, not except in the stories he's willing to share. It's not dressing up, the vivid blue-red lushness of his mouth, eyes edged in smoky grey and heavy black; it's the person who isn't dressing up when he looks like this, even if when he's performing, he sometimes does. Because there's a world where Adam does this because he's going on a stage and a world where he does this because that's who he is, and it's just a coincidence that they happen to look the same.

They don't feel the same, though, and Kris takes the extra spoon Adam extends and follows him across cool, lightless rooms, someone he's never met, only seen in brief glimpses that belong exclusively to people that aren't and have never been him.

Kris doesn't look at the TV, curling up on the overstuffed leather couch that never fails to try and swallow him whole, stabbing a spoon into the offered carton. "Bad day?" he asks carefully, navigating by instinct; he can deal with this. He can find the guy he knows with a few words, a look, but Adam didn't mean for him to see this and Kris didn't realize, not until now, how much he'd wanted it and how much it scared him, too. His hands shake a little and he bites down on the spoon to remind himself he's only an idiot when they film him that way.

"Maybe? No? Kind of." Even Adam looks a little less huge when he's fighting the couch for dominance, and Kris watches the battle with interest until Adam pulls his feet up, tucking them against the seam of the cushion in a winning maneuver. It's too dark to see very much, but Kris stares at the faint redness circling one wrist and imagines if he could see the other, they'd be a matched set, brutal and vivid in the normal light of day, or beneath the bald glare kitchen lights if Kris had thought to turn them on. "I loathe music executives."

"Plague on mankind and innovation in the industry," Kris agrees, leaning over in a precarious maneuver to get another spoonful from the carton on Adam's lap, a damp ring darkening the grey of the sweatpants. "They say you can't light yourself on fire on stage again? Let's hate insurance guys while we're going there. They raised my rates again, and I wasn't even speeding." Much, anyway.

Adam leans his head back on the cushions, staring at the ceiling, tongue tracing his lower lip slowly, unhappy; Kris wonders why he came home, why he didn't find what he was looking for tonight. "I just--I expected it. And I wanted it. And I still do."

Kris nods, licking his spoon. "Kind of glad I missed that," Kris answers, which isn't honest, but Adam wouldn't believe the truth, even when he's sitting by it and stealing sweatpants from it.

Adam turns his head, lazy and deliberate and disbelieving, which makes Kris snort. Scooping up a softened spoonful, Kris holds it out. "Bet you didn't even eat lunch, did you? You have to get over the idea broccoli will get stuck in your teeth and just _not order broccoli_."

Adam doesn't look at the spoon. "I have no idea," he says softly, bitterly, the way things that are true sometimes are, "why you don't hate me."

Chest tight, Kris leans forward and shoves the spoon between Adam's lips before he can hurt himself more. The spoon is stained dark, like staring into lightless water, like the way Adam is looking at him now. Getting another bite, Kris shoves at Adam's feet until the distance between Kris and the ice cream isn't a small country and tastes lipstick waxy on his tongue, richer than fudge in the next bite.

"You need a vacation," he says, instead of all the things he can't. "Even you can't keep up this schedule." Working all day, partying all night, and Kris can't prove he sleeps, but then again, Kris isn't sleeping either, no matter how much time he spends in his bed. Which isn't, in retrospect, much at all.

Adam's mouth crooks. "Sure I can. I'm awesome."

Kris scoops up another bite of ice cream and offers it with a grin; it's playful and harmless and he still thinks he should have known better when Adam tilts his head and leans forward, one warm hand bracing on Kris' thigh as he takes the bite, teeth closing on the metal and pulling it from Kris' nerveless fingers.

This, Kris thinks faintly, was not a well-thought out plan. If there had been a plan, in fact, Kris would say it sucked.

"Jamaica," Kris says carefully as Adam drops the spoon in the carton, metal half-vanishing in into lumps of half-melted ice cream. "Aruba?"

"Sunburn," Adam murmurs, sweetly filthy, silver nails touching Kris' cheek in four points of coolness against warm skin. Kris opens his mouth to add the obvious rejoiner, _That's why you own five million kinds of sunscreen_, but Adam kisses him, licking the words away, hard and too-fast, like a shock of static electricity in winter, and Kris closes his fingers over Adam's wrist and holds on, breath knotted in the back of his throat.

When he pulls back, mouth smeared imperfect and messy, Kris licks his lips, tasting Adam and lipstick and wonders how time could have dimmed the memory of this when he hadn't thought it had dimmed at all.

He doesn't hold on when Adam jerks back; it's too expected to hurt, and Kris is too used to disappointment to be surprised. Reaching up, Kris wipes his mouth with his thumb and leans over Adam's legs to get the ice cream, pulling out the sticky spoon and licking it clean while trying to make the flashing colors of the TV resolve into something that makes sense. "I think there's a _Farscape_ marathon tonight," he says, ice cream melting cold in his lap.

Almost tentatively, Adam's head rests against his shoulder. Kris wraps an arm around his shoulders without hesitation and shuts his eyes for a moment, because really, come _on_. He's changed, he's learning, he's _learned_; he knows how to let go. "Hey, where's the remote anyway?"

* * *

There's actually a town called _Truth or Consequences_. "Seriously," Kris says, staring out the window. "It's actually _called_\--"

"I _know_," Adam answers, because he's taking a page from the Book of Stupid Testosterone Moments (Kris Translation) and has been driving for five hours with a single gas station excursion for the sake of Kris' bladder and enough water to outfit a small Saharan caravan. Kris remembers fondly the teenage clerk staring out the window in disbelief while Adam pretended he could pass for ordinary and pumped gas. Kris was kind enough just to calculate it himself after the fourth register error, glad the ATM had been working and he had cash; there was no telling what kind of horror could have been perpetuated if the kid had been given a credit card.

"Is that--" the boy squinted, brown eyes growing huge and filled with mindless infatuation as he hit the wrong keys five consecutive times, oblivious to Kris' helpless giggling. After a few minutes of standing around looking amazing, Adam wandered inside, sunglasses more an act of plausible deniability than of any kind of use.

"What are you--hey, are those pop rocks?"

Kris added them to the total and tried to remember his own teenage years clearly enough to recognize the model of cash register, because the kid just went beyond language. Adam looked between them for a long moment, then sighed, like being the sex symbol of a generation was just too tedious for words.

Kris giggles now thinking about it; from the corner of his eye, he can feel Adam trying to stare him into silence, but that just makes it worse. "That's so creepy."

"It's three in the morning," Kris answers with a grin, punchy and sugar-soaked, tiny hits of adrenaline like electricity running over his skin. Maybe he did need to get out of the city for a while, clear his head, maybe Adam wasn't the only one that needed a vacation.

"Maybe we should stop," Adam says, unexpected, and Kris looks at him in surprise. "What? I can't get tired? Hello, _lost in the wilderness_\--"

"We're on a major highway," Kris points out. "And the rules of roadtripdom--"

"Allow for sleep."

"I can drive."

"Yeah, because that worked well last time." Kris scowls. "Fine, the GPS is--I don't know, it went really wrong, and I'm going to call and complain about that, what if we'd been in like, _Africa_ or something? We could have ended up taken hostage or--"

Kris waits while Adam spins out their long and terrifying incarceration by unnamed but terrifying extremists and doesn't even correct his geography, but stops him when they get to the part Adam where offers a free concert as a ruse to escape, unable to stop himself from saying "How do you carry that much ego and still have the strength to walk?"

"That's it--now you're just being mean, and you only get like that when you're tired." Las Cruces is growing slowly closer, and Kris feels his mood fading; tiny motels in the middle of fields of untyped agricultural development are one thing, but this is a place with hotels and broadband, and there's no way on earth Adam's going to get five seconds in public without someone recognizing him and then it's a party with five thousand media outlets broadcasting to the free world and twittering like the apocalypse is nigh. It could bring down the internet.

Also, Kris realizes with a sinking feeling, both his mom and Adam's will know exactly where to call, and Kris doesn't think he can face them both verbally expressing their disappointment with their sons finally going crazy and disowning them via speakerphone. From the look on Adam's face as the city limits approach way too fast, this may have occurred to him as well.

Maybe he _is_ tired; Kris realizes he's been drifting when abruptly, he notices the car is in a stopped position and Adam is no longer in the driver's seat. Frowning, Kris recognizes enough of his surroundings to say with some certainty they're in an alley. From the clock, it's been an hour since the last time he checked.

Crawling over to the driver's seat, Kris sees Adam leaning against the wall a few feet away, phone against his ear; Kris doesn't let the disappointment last more than a moment, settling himself back in the passenger seat and hunting up his ipod and headphones, because it's much easier to face shouted questions when you don't have to hear them.

When Adam gets back in, Kris is still trying to find the perfect playlist; there's a lot of industrial rock on there, and people screeching in his ear about nihilism beats reporters asking him if he gave it up to Adam to win or waited until the tour to become a Hollywood cliché.

"So," Adam says, staring at the steering wheel with a fixed expression, "your mom disinherited me."

Kris twists around. "You _called my mom_?"

"Do I look stupid enough to call mine? I'd still be on the phone trying to convince her I didn't _kidnap you_ while she traced my cellphone so she could send my brother to lecture in person." Running a hand through his hair (from the look, it's not the first time), Adam frowns at the universe not bending to his will.

"But why--"

"Well," Adam says, "there's a better than average chance that someone, somewhere, who is by the way _so fucking fired_ leaked our route. And since we _aren't_ in Austin, and there's a credit card receipt showing up wherever the _fuck_ we ended up last night--"

"Wow, that was fast." Kris stares at the darkness outside the alley as he interprets the deterioration of Adam's language to mean they're screwed. "Okay."

Adam looks at him. "_Okay_?"

Kris fingers his ipod. "It's not like I thought--"

"Oh. You _thought_." Reaching for the ignition, Adam starts the car with a vicious twist of his wrist. "You know what? Fuck that noise. I'm not done. And your mother is awesome, so shut up, because I have a plan."

Jerking the car into gear, Kris grabs for the armrest as Adam pretends he is still someone who regularly drives in cities and jerks out onto the road with a grind of gears that makes Kris wince for the transmission. "Adam," he starts warily.

"Just shut up and tell me if you see a convenience store. Apparently," and here Adam consults his phone, "we're going to need toilet paper. And maybe towels."

* * *

There are perfectly normal and sane people who prefer to stay at home and avoid contact with other human beings, but when you're avoiding your email because it feels like too much work to hit reply and say hi, that's a problem.

To compromise, Kris wanders out on the back deck so he can honestly say he's been outside the house in the last three weeks without outright lying (to whom he'd be lying is unclear; that requires _contact with other people_). Curling up in a deck chair, he looks out on the illusion of privacy created by the trees, relaxing despite himself in the warmth of an LA spring, sunlight spilling over the wood only a few feet away.

Maybe here, he thinks drowsily, leaving his notebooks in a pile on the deck to deal with when he feels more sane, he'll finally be able to sleep.

It's impossibly quiet, like they aren't in a city at all; half-dozing, Kris hears the doors open behind him, Adam's voice as he wanders around in Kris' sweatpants for any telephoto lens to see. Kris cracks his eyes open enough to see Adam roll his eyes and make a vague sound that could be interpreted as assent before hanging up. "Have I been doing this long enough to get away with hanging up on everyone and say my inner artist is starving or something? Crazy, but less Carrie Fisher, more--" Adam pauses, frowning, "--not Carrie Fisher."

Kris smirks as Adam pushes his legs aside and straddles the foot of the chair, cracking open his eyes just enough to watch Adam typing into his phone with a frown, like he's doing something hugely important and not trying the latest version of Pac-Man. He looks tired, but when he looks up and sees Kris watching, he smiles, and Kris feels his chest tighten, like the first time they met and even then, even _then_\--

"Two more meetings and you're done," Kris says, letting his eyes fall shut, unable to help grinning as the phone rings again, imagining Adam's scowl. "Want me to make dinner?"

"It won't take that long," Adam sighs in utter misery at his lot in life to be famous and wanted by the entire world. "Though this feels like a pizza night, don't you think?" Kris listens to him stand up again, bare feet padding toward the edge of the deck as he answers the call.

Then he stops. "No," he says, in a voice stripped of expression. "I haven't."

Adrenaline can feel like panic, or maybe it's the other way around; Kris sits up, watching as Adam paces back toward him, nudging him over. The chair really isn't big enough for an Adam sized person and anything bigger than a purse size dog, but that doesn't seem to be a deterrent, and Kris lets Adam ease him back down, resting his head against Adam's shoulder and comfortably sprawled half across his lap.

"No," Adam says finally, very softly, fingers sifting through Kris' hair absently, with hypnotic results. "I won't. Try his phone. I think we're done." Adam ends the call, then turns it off, dropping it on the deck. "Yeah, I'm taking the day off."

For a second, Kris almost wants to fight it. "Adam."

Adam traces a finger down his cheek, raising goosebumps as he cups the back of Kris' neck. The words are simple, but the implications are anything but. "I want to."

That's no surprise at all; Kris thinks he may have been counting on it, but he's too relieved to be ashamed. "Okay."

After a second, Adam says, "So did I tell you my PA is having a really disturbing affair with that cute technician we had on tour? The one that--" Adam makes a gesture that indicates the universal sign of "fucked several times, including one really embarrassing time in your bunk, which I'm not really sorry for, because it was hilarious". "You know."

Kris frowns. "I thought he was gay."

"So did I." Adam pulls at the edge of his shirt, fingers stroking down the small of his back, long and languorous and perfect. "There's--" Adam waves, "--drama. When did this happen? Where's my drama? I have to subsist on her anecdotes about kinky heterosexual shenanigans, and at this point, there's a fair to good chance it's not just because I'm an awesome boss."

"Your drama ends up in the tabloids. Remember last time? With the--" Kris gestures, indicated the universal sign for "And then everyone with an internet connection had a picture of your cock, and the macros were hilarious" and Kris totally felt bad for Adam, but he also has a hard drive of the macros. It almost made up for the bunk thing. "You said it wasn't worth--" Kris catches his breath as he realizes where this conversation is going, startled; Adam had never been the type to be subtle. Almost involuntarily, Kris looks toward the phone.

"Yeah, I was wrong," Adam says, sounding sleepy and vaguely smug. "I kind of like drama."

* * *

"Well," Kris admits after a few long seconds of staring into the bathroom, unable to speak, "the toilet paper was a good idea."

"Googlemaps reviews," Adam says in satisfaction from his sprawl across a horribly colored comforter that somehow manages to look gaudy even faded three shades. Closing the door carefully, Kris looks at the mass of their accumulated luggage on the other bed (Kris, one bag, one guitar case; Adam, everything else). There's a faint smell of disinfectant and insecticide and possibly, decomposing bodies. Kris has watched enough television to avoid looking under the bed; this feels like the kind of moment he actually might find something.

"My _mom_ recommended this?" It's not a really subtle punishment, Kris thinks, but it's effective.

"Eventually," Adam answers evasively, turning off the phone with his thumb and tossing it toward the other bed to drown itself among the bags. "She tried to conference my mom in, but then my battery ran out, which is a shame."

Kris raises an eyebrow.

"It _did_." After a moment, he sighs, rolling on his side. "She says hi, and I'm supposed to make sure you eat and sleep and burn the goddamn notebook. Which had occurred to me--"

Kris glances worriedly at his bag.

"--but really, let's be honest here, I _love_ that notebook."

Kris wonders if he's missing time; this conversation no longer makes sense. "You take it away and hide it in really obvious places."

"I'm getting better at it."

"You're really not." Kris wonders if its too early (or late? Something) for delivery. It's not that he's hungry, but stranger things have happened, and you really can't go wrong with pizza. There's a pile of faded take-out menus scattered across the bedside table, and Kris allows himself a single second to mourn the life he's become accustomed to, which includes room service any time of day or night and rooms where major crimes were probably not committed, or at least, the cleaning staff cleaned up after them thoroughly. "What time--"

"I was thinking about a vacation," Adam says, very quietly, like an admission, though of what, Kris doesn't know. Sitting up, he pulls off his boots and tosses them to the floor before swinging his legs over the side of the bed, bracketing Kris in black denim. "Like, a real one, without my phone."

Kris snorts his opinion on that as he picks up the menus, greasy and smelling faintly of rancid meat. Yeah, he's losing interest in even the theory of eating now.

"And then you showed up, which was a surprise--"

Kris glances at him. "You should have said something; I didn't--"

"And my assistant tried to quit when I told her to cancel it, because my vacation spot of choice showed up on my doorstep, which just proves that, yes, in LA, anything can be delivered."

Kris feels the greasy menus sliding out of his fingers and tosses them blindly in the direction of a flat surface. "Believe it or not," Kris says slowly, staring at the peeling paint above the lamp, "I missed you, too."

He had, in that way that he'd spent a lot of time ignoring, and if it wasn't successful, he was pretty damn good at pretending he was.

"I like your notebook," Adam says slowly. "I like that you know where I hide it, even when I forgot, which by the way was embarrassing. I like knowing you take it everywhere with you, and you wouldn't leave without it. And I like knowing as long as I have it, there's a fair to good chance you won't leave."

Kris doesn't answer for a second, then Adam stands up, taking up all the space that Kris is tired of having empty anyway, hands closing on his hips. This, Kris thinks, would be a good time to say something--anything-- "You never called," Kris says, and that--that wasn't what he had in mind.

"Kris--"

"I really, really didn't mean to say that." Taking a deep breath, Kris turns around, wanting to touch Adam, but tonight, he's not strong enough to feel Adam flinch. "I'm just tired. I have no clue what I'm saying."

Adam's forehead presses against his, a spot of bright warmth that doesn't last nearly long enough. "Go to bed," he breathes, pulling away. "I'm going to take a shower."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Kris pulls up a leg to pull of his shoe. "Turn on the light and wait a minute before you go in there," he offers. Adam hesitates, looking worried. "Give them a chance to hide."

"_Them_?"

Rockstar, Kris thinks fondly, tossing the shoe onto the second bed. "Yeah. Them. Just don't look around too carefully."

* * *

Kris isn't sure what woke him up, blinking blearily into the smooth softness of the pillow with late morning sun spilling across the foot of the bed; to his surprise, he realizes it must have been hours since he fell asleep. It's been a long time since that happened. That it happened here isn't a surprise, and it may very well be a statement.

Following the faint sound of voices, he steps over discarded leather and shoes piled haphazardly in a pile near the closet, smelling of cologne and smoke, down the stairs to see Adam leaning against the island and drinking coffee with a nervous looking member of his security.

In retrospect, Kris thinks he's surprised it took this long. Swallowing, he sees Adam's head jerk up before he finishes the "Hey."

"No worries," Adam says to the guy without looking away. "The great groupie experiment of last summer still lives evergreen in my memory. And in the pages of a thousand tabloids to memorialize the horror just in case my attempts at deliberate amnesia ever pay off. No comment, and oh, look mean, okay? I love watching TMZ flinch."

"Adam," the guy starts, but then seems to remember who he's dealing with. "I'll keep you informed."

Morbidly curious, Kris starts toward a window; from this angle, he wouldn't usually see much, but on a guess, this won't be usual.

"Hey, hey, no," and like that, Adam's only steps away, holding out a coffee cup, waggling it slightly mid-air and managing against the laws of morning to not spill a drop. "Avoid the temptation. Come to the coffee, the very good, life-affirming coffee."

"Your coordination isn't this good this early," Kris says suspiciously, willing to take the bait. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long," Adam lies, like he always gets dressed before the sun rises every day and looks like maybe he saw a bed once and didn't see the point. "I--"

"Adam," Kris says steadily, setting the cup down before he drops it and staring at the granite. "I really--maybe it's time I--"

"Oh, that." Adam glances at the window, faintly satisfied, taking another sip from his cup. "I've been wondering if we were going to have to have this conversation. Normally, this is where I'd talk you out of trying to leave, but there's a fairly large human barrier that's doing it for me, so that's some saved effort there. Hungry?"

Kris shakes his head, not trusting his voice. There's a newspaper on the other side of the island, and he hasn't seen one in weeks. Adam is not subtle. "How--"

"The wonders of a really good telephoto lens and a hotel clerk with a distressing lack of discretion," Adam answers, watching the toaster intently. Reaching back, he picks up his phone, waving it in Kris' general direction. "I got something like a million tweets in five seconds flat before the site crashed."

In Kris' least optimistic moments, he hadn't imagined anything like this. He's glad he's so close to the island; his legs don't feel like they're going to hold up much longer. "Fuck."

Faintly, he hears the toaster pop, but he can't make himself lift his head. A stool is shoved against his knees, and Kris uses one foot to brace himself and slide on as a plate is slid beneath his elbow, filling the tiny space with the smell of butter and apricot preserves. "Baby, grey is not a good look on anyone."

Licking his lips, Kris makes himself straighten; it's the third hardest thing he's ever done. Adam, braced on his elbows, sips his coffee thoughtfully, scrolling down his phone with an interested expression.

"I--didn't think it would be this bad."

Adam looks at him incredulously. "I did."

Kris finds himself staring at the paper, because it's been four weeks and somehow, he'd thought, maybe (please) he'd been wrong after all, they'd all been wrong, and in retrospect, that was stupid like a lifestyle choice. Swallowing hard, he takes the coffee cup in both hands and finishes it in a gulp, scalding his tongue and wishing for a shot of whiskey.

"Hey, hey, no, don't do that," Adam pulls the cup out of his hand before he drops it, turning him on the stool, and hey, something against his back is a really good idea. "Kris. _Kris_. It's people with cameras and suggestively long microphones, not the Marines. The worst they can do is get you at a bad angle, and you don't have any."

Kris hiccups a laugh, surprising himself, and Adam grins back. "That--" Kris thinks of Twitter and gulps. "I didn't want--Adam, I didn't come here to--I never meant to--"

"Yeah," Adam says, leaning close enough to press their foreheads together. "If you'd meant to, it would be a lot easier."

Kris pulls back. "Adam--" It's like the long hours in the hotel room all over again, his publicist calling until he turned off the phone, like anything she says can ever fix this, staring at a notebook filled with the confessions of everything he never thought he'd do. The smart thing to do would have been to stay there and watch time run out, but he'd stopped being smart a long time ago. "You know--you know what will happen if--" when, his mind offers, he's blown past conditionals, this is _when_, but maybe, maybe-- "--it wasn't--they'll never believe it wasn't you."

"Oh." Adam pulls back, picking up the plate and pulling Kris off the stool, shoving it into his hands and pushing him in the general direction of the living room. "Yeah, whatever, let them."

Kris tightens his grip on the plate, fingers numb as he watches Adam pour two more cups of coffee and pick them up, kicking Kris into motion as he passes. There has to be a response to that, but Kris can't remember how words fit together in sentences right now. Gripping his toast, Kris follows him, setting his toast carefully on the coffee table beside the cups, then Adam pulls him down on the couch, the overstuffed leather warm against his back and Adam braced on one elbow above him.

Not looking away, Adam aims the remote at the television, and from the corner of his eye, Kris can see the grainy picture of Adam's deck and two tiny, indistinct figures curled up on a chair filling the screen, voices background noise swallowed beneath the pound of blood in his ears.

Adam shrugs, dropping the remote and cupping Kris' cheek, smile gone. "Breathe, baby. We'll get through this."

Kris licks his lips and watches Adam's eyes focus on his mouth, not bothering to hide it, not hiding _anything_, Christ, he hadn't known this, hadn't even _guessed_.

"Because really," Adam breathes, "it should have been me."

* * *

Kris feels one of his earbuds pulled away before Adam drops on the bed beside him. Fighting the urge to change the playlist, Kris watches Adam frown slightly before his expression clears into amusement, giggling as he relaxes into the flat pillow. "So this is where you're getting your emo."

Kris scowls half-heartedly. "Whatever, man, it's awesome."

"I don't even know what to say to that." Picking up the ipod before Kris can grab for it, he scrolls down the playlist, smile growing at the list of tracks before setting it back down between them. Through the window there's a sudden, bright light, and Kris flinches, sitting up before he can stop himself, heart in his throat.

It passes--they're near a major city street for God's sake--but it's a lot longer before he can make himself relax, unable to look away from the window, glare-spots filling his vision like the lights of the press.

Taking a deep breath, he looks down at the bed and Adam and wonders how the hell he can have lived with this for so long and how he learned not to be afraid.

"Suggestively large microphones," Adam says, mouth quirking in a ghost of a smile, and Kris laughs; it's all so insane. Dropping back to the bed with a bounce, he buries his head on the mattress beneath the pillow because laughing is way too close to crying and he's just not in a place where he's ready to cry in front of another human being. Like, _ever_. "Breathe. Seriously, you have a pillow over your head--what, you think you're leaving me alone with this? Not a fucking chance."

Kris swallows his reflexive protest; Adam wasn't supposed to be involved at all. One hand rests on his back, rubbing slow, soothing circles; to his own surprise, it works. "My publicist wrote all these statements, and I don't even know which one she went with. I don't even know if she works for me anymore."

Adam snickers softly, breath warm and ruffling Kris' hair as he takes the pillow, tossing it aside, fingers resting in Kris' hair. "We'll get through this," he breathes, settling close enough that Kris doesn't have any choice but to see the sincerity behind the smile, because Adam writes his own press and believes every word of it. "It'll be okay."

Swallowing, Kris reaches out, fingers brushing Adam's cheek, skin warm and soft beneath his fingers. "What did you call boys like me?" Kris whispers, just to feel Adam flinch. "You used to tell me about them, all those guys who pretended what they came for wasn't exactly what they got; you even told me the clubs where it happened. Like maybe you knew--"

"Kris--"

"Like, was it _funny_, that I didn't even know and you did?" Maybe he did know, though; he wouldn't have remembered otherwise, stored up the names in the back of his mind for a long night when a temporary separation seemed like it would be more permanent than he was ready to admit. There are a hundred words for the kind of boy who goes places like that, but at least he didn't pretend it took two shots to get him there. "I didn't want to be that guy," Kris breathes, pulling away, fingertips burning. "But I did it anyway."

Adam catches his hand. "You can cry now, if you want," he answers, mouth quirking. "It's Hollywood, baby; you're allowed to make mistakes."

Kris tries to jerk away; Adam just blinks his surprise Kris makes the attempt. "You want to talk about it now? I'm used to straight boys confessing they're drunk when they're swallowing my cock. The difference is--"

"I'm not blowing you?"

Adam touches his face, gentle, sweet, and inevitable. "There's that, though I wouldn't object."

Kris hiccups a giggle, shaking his head.

"And you're not drunk, though there's a convenience store right next door and I'm game if you are--"

"Yeah," Kris says, staring at Adam's mouth; he can't remember why he shouldn't. "Thing is, I'm not straight, either."

It's the second hardest thing he's ever said, and it's not really hard at all. Adam pushes himself up on one elbow, and Kris has moment to wonder when he stopped being afraid. "I knew," Adam agrees, like it's a secret when it's anything but. "But I didn't tell you so you could fumble your way through a gay epiphany in a goddamn back room alone."

Kris used to be the kind of guy things just happened to; he's not sure who this guy is who makes them happen. Who twists back into the mattress, watches Adam lazily lean over him, like maybe he's figured out that he doesn't need to ask. "I wasn't alone."

Kris shivers as purple-tipped black hair sweeps across his cheek, Adam pressing a kiss against his jaw, leaving the outline of his teeth in Kris' skin that will bloom plum-black by morning. Kris reaches up, fingers scrabbling over the worn material of the t-shirt until he can find skin, slick and damp at the small of Adam's back, using his nails to hear Adam hiss and pull back, pink tongue licking over his lips as his eyes fix on Kris' mouth, eyes narrowed in something between anger and lust and hope all three.

Sitting back on his heels, he pulls off the t-shirt, and Kris catches his breath as Adam fingers slide through his, stretching his arms over his head. "And that's okay," Adam whispers, knee pushing between Kris' legs, the words slipping over Kris' lips like a kiss. "Firsts are _so_ overrated; I just want to be your last."

* * *

"You know," Adam says, peeking out the blinds with a slightly manic grin from overconsumption of espresso when coffee stopped cutting it around noon, "I think we're beating Britney's latest breakdown."

"God," Kris breathes, changing the channel; now that the dam of denial has broken, Kris has become one with the remote control. Adam in a fit of sadism left the laptop open tabbed to more gossip pages than Kris knew existed, and the sheer lack of loading is even more of an indictment than the crowd outside. There is no denial when ONTD can't refresh; all that's left is acceptance. "Shut up, Adam--"

"Huh, there's a guy climbing the wall," Adam says helpfully. "Rock those ninja skills. Think they teach them that in paparazzi school?"

"Are you high?"

Adam grins, retreating from the window. "On life, baby." Picking up the laptop, Adam takes the remote and turns off the TV that's been broadcasting the same view of the house for hours, with short breaks to comment on the fact nothing is happening in portentous tones that seem to imply marathon sex is the only reason that Adam and Kris haven't come out--irony, Kris thinks desperately, so much irony.

Their phones stare at them from the coffee table among the detritus of two empty tubs of ice cream and no attempt at a food group that doesn't involve the word "junk".

"Nothing's loading," Kris says hopefully, which is when Perez comes up in Pepto-pink and Adam says, "Hey, I turned you gay; you know what kind of cred that gets me?" which is so not what Kris needs to hear right now. Or see, though that doesn't stop Kris from leaning over Adam's shoulder and reading. "No, they don't have his name, honey. The mystery continues."

Kris flushes, pulling away before Adam catches his wrist, keeping him in place as he scrolls through comments; he knows what to look for better than Kris does anyway. "So," Adam says, changing tabs, the asshole, "maybe we'd better get our stories straight. I have place--thank you, Perez, you're actually useful, you fuck--date and time. I'm willing to improvise--"

Kris covers his face with his free hand. "God, will you shut up about your--that's not a plan, I don't even know what to _call that_\--"

"Because yours is going to work really well," Adam says with maddening logic. "The hiding until it all goes away thing, really? You want to try that? Because eventually, we're going to run out of food."

Kris looks at the coffee table dubiously; he's seen Adam's pantry.

"Okay, it will take a while," Adam admits. "But the point stands. I miss Starbucks already."

"I can leave," Kris says, involuntarily looking toward the window with a shudder. "And, and call my publicist--" He has a publicist for a reason, and that's because he fails at knowing what the hell to do most of the time.

"It's like you suddenly acquired brain damage," Adam says, tightening his grip on Kris' wrist on the off-chance Kris finds the will to stand up or something. "Admittedly, it would be hilarious to watch you try to navigate _this_\--"

Kris groans softly.

"--but counterproductive in the long run." With a quick pull, he's half-sprawled across Adam's lap, grabbing uselessly at the slick leather for traction. "Details, baby; I can't sell this unless I know what I did."

Kris stares up at him. "You want me to tell you--" He stops there; Adam's talent for sharing information isn't one he's ever acquired and this doesn't seem the time or place to start. "You think they'll ask for details?"

"I think," Adam says, "that part, they know. Discretion apparently was not the better part of valor in backrooms."

Kris thinks about that. "They don't even have his name. I don't even--" Kris stops himself short; Adam might have guessed, but he hadn't known. Closing his eyes, Kris takes a deep breath; he could be more of a cliché, but it would take some work to get there. "I don't know his name," Kris says slowly. "I--didn't ask."

"I guess it's only fair," Adam answers in a voice that Kris doesn't recognize, settling back against the overstuffed cushions, head tilting back in thought as he stares at the ceiling. "You didn't tell me and half the world found out without so much as a call, thanks by the way, but you really didn't need to try and protect my fragile sensibilities by leaving it to fucking TMZ to be the messenger--"

Adam's hand holds his hip when he would have moved away.

"--so really, it's nice to know something that half the world doesn't, even you."

Mouth dry, Kris waits as Adam lifts his head, eyes flat and unhappy. "What?"

"I don't actually need details," Adam says softly, and maybe brain damage is about right. He'd thought he'd imagined every reaction Adam could have to this, but this one he hadn't. "And if you thought I did, you really don't know me very well."

Adam's _mad_, and Kris hadn't expected that; then again, he should have. He knows what they call boys who did what he did, what people like Adam think of them; Adam taught him all the names. He can't expect to be the exception. "I--didn't think--"

"Obviously," Adam answers, ruthlessly soft, and he'd known he'd disappoint Adam somehow, had always know, but he'd never imagined anything that felt like this, like the world coming to a stop. "We've been playing a really fun game here of I know something you don't, but I think I just won. I know his name."

* * *

"So this is how it went down," Adam says, Kris' shirt gathered in his hands as he slides it up until Kris had to sit up, let him take it off. "You met me there. You were two months into the separation and it was a bad time--"

"Adam," Kris watches with a faint sense of unreality as Adam scoots back enough to get at the button of Kris' jeans, a one-handed twist that looks easy and Kris couldn't manage if he was paid. It's not a reminder, exactly, of how many people Adam's fucked; he sees it on TV, on the cover of every tabloid in world, brilliant across youtube and gossip blogs, boyfriends that lasted the length of time it took for Adam to finish a track, an album, a tour; groupies and friends and people in dark clubs. It's not that he doesn't know, that it's new; Adam's done this to him since they met. Adam had thought Kris was safe, and the truth is, Kris had thought so, too.

"And I said you needed to get out of the house for a while," Adam continues, fingernails scraping against his waist and down to his hips in sharp, white-hot flickers like summer lightning, there and gone, over before they even began. "Get you out of your head." Adam looks up, smiling encouragingly. "It writes itself, really."

Kris chokes on a laugh, lifting his hips obediently, watching his jeans vanish before Adam's fingers close over his hips, pulling him into his lap, soft denim rough against the skin of his inner thighs, shivering when Adam's hand slides to press against the small of his back.

"Now," Adam says softly, nosing against his throat, "you had better refresh my memory. How much did you drink?"

"I didn't." Adam pulls back, looking at him, eyebrows raised. "I--I let him think I was--"

"Let _me_ think, hello, fucking up my narrative here--"

Kris laughs a little. "You would have known the difference."

Adam tilts his head back, studying Kris the way he had when they met and more times after than Kris could easily count. "You're right. I would have." Long fingers curl around the back of his neck, and Kris can't see anything but Adam's mouth, cherry red and vivid even in the dark. "Then--"

"Dancing," Kris says as Adam's fingernails draw shivering lines up and down his neck, ruffling the short hair against the grain before smoothing it anew; it's hard to think. "It was awful music and the sound quality was terrible; I kept wanting to go and check their set-up--"

"Yeah," Adam says, lips parting in a sudden smile, "I did too. No help for it; substandard equipment. No one goes there for the music anyway."

Of course they don't. Kris licks his lips helplessly, fighting the shiver at each stroke of Adam's fingers, the press of memory. It was hot, too, not enough light and too many people in a too-small space, brushing up against him with every step, trapping him in manic, breathless excitement that made him feel drunk the way he'd thought water that night would avoid. He's too short to survive that kind of crowd on his own; everywhere they went during tour, Adam had been there, huge in a way that wasn't just height and weight, but a presence that opened up space without effort, a circle of safety in a crowd that wasn't. All that heat and presence and frenzy was just beyond them, with Adam's fingers wrapped in his belt loops to keep him close, the others joining them sometimes, Megan and Matt and sometimes even Danny, but always Adam, who thought Kris was safe.

Then someone's fingers had slid into the loops of his belt, tugging him before he could start to panic; someone who fit against the curve of his back, catching his hip and easing him into the rhythm of the music, someone who didn't think that Kris was safe at all.

"Kris."

Kris still wakes up sweating from the memory; the press of unfamiliar bodies, the surprise of being touched by someone who meant it, who wanted it, and the shock that he really hadn't come here just to see; he finished his water and turned into the arms of someone he'd had never met and realized he hadn't really come here to answer any questions. He knew the answer.

"Did you tease him, baby?" Adam breathes against his ear. "I loved to watch you like that; you didn't even know, did you? All pretty," a slow lick beneath his ear, "wide-eyed innocence with your hand on my ass and riding my thigh and I could feel you up in front of half the club, and no one ever cared."

"I didn't--"

"That wasn't," Adam says, catching the lobe of his ear between his teeth like a warning, "a complaint."

It hadn't lasted long; he'd been eased toward the edge of the crowd in minutes, breaking into a back room too dark with the flashing lights from the dance floor still burned into his retinas. Pushed back against a wall, cool against sweat-damp back, thinking _finally_, this was where it had been going, where he'd been going, stubble stinging his skin when the guy had kissed him, quick and hard, because you didn't--

"--go back there just to kiss." Kris opens his eyes, startled at the sound of his own voice, and Adam cups his cheek and kisses him.

* * *

Adam's house is huge; what he does with the space, Kris has no idea. It's easy to get lost in, but Adam projects presence in quantities sufficient to make it so much smaller than it is. He can count the times he's seen Adam really angry on one hand, but one finger is enough when it comes to him.

It's nearly dusk before he forces himself to close the laptop, flipping off the television, unable to help thinking of the front door. He's not afraid like Adam thinks he is.

He told his wife, broke her heart and broke his own all at once, knowing this was something she would have been willing to forget. He told his parents in his mother's bright kitchen, that his marriage was going to end, and then he told them why, knowing they'd prefer any lie to an easily concealed truth. In the end, he could have saved himself the effort; it took a year and a scattering of days, but truth really does set you free. The divorce papers citing adultery had hit his hotel at the same time his publicist asked him who else knew in the voice of his wife, his parents, asking him to pretend that nothing had changed, himself least of all, when everything, everything had.

It was four weeks between the first hints hit the gossip blogs until the story broke; there aren't pictures yet, but Kris thinks that's a matter of time. He didn't know the guy's name, but apparently, he'd known _his_. It shouldn't have surprised him, but it still does.

It's nearly dusk when Kris hears the quiet pad of feet over hardwood, muffled by the occasional rug, slowing with proximity like relativity in reverse. Kris shuts his eyes, wishing for his ipod, for headphones and being able to pretend he doesn't know Adam is there.

"I seriously want to get you a bottle of whiskey and a guitar; it's all very Johnny Cash, pre-June," Adam says, clearing a space on the coffee table and sitting down. "Crying alone in the dark--"

"You didn't make me cry, Adam," Kris answers, voice thicker than he likes. Keeping his eyes on the ceiling, Kris tries to breathe normally and think of nothing, nothing at all.

"Yeah, but I _really_ wanted to. I still kind of do. Not like I'm proud of it or anything, but as you know, we all do things we regret--"

"I don't. Regret it."

He's not sure how convincing that is when he feels like he's suffocating, but that's all he's got. It settles between them like a bomb, or a maybe a badly worded expression of affection; since it's them, it's up for interpretation either way. The only thing about Adam Lambert that's ever been easy is falling in love with him; that's what makes everything else so hard. Kris would have stopped if he could; a lot of his choices have, in the end, been about the one thing that wasn't a choice at all. Comparatively speaking, everything he's done since that moment has been fucking genius, right up to going on his knees in a backroom in a world of camera phones.

"Did you ever, even once, think about--"

"Adam," Kris says, shutting his eyes; this is the part that's going to hurt. "I always knew what I was doing. There's nothing about this that I didn't see coming."

The response isn't immediate, which just makes it worse. Then, "And you thought this was a good idea?"

Kris turns his head, blinking at the faint amusement in Adam's voice. Adam looks very Adam, showered, apparently, in Kris' stolen sweatpants and biting his lip against the kind of laughter that only comes when you are so fucked you can feel it on your skin like fresh sweat, the kind when you're about three drinks past sober and feeling up your best friend at a club and pretending it's safe. It's not that it's funny except in all the ways it is.

"At what point--and I mean this seriously--did going to fucking _WeHo_ for your special moment seem like a good idea?" Abruptly, Adam stands up, knee shoving at Kris' shoulder until he moves in self defense, curling up in the corner and trapping Kris before he can get too far with arm across his collar. "Couldn't you have done this in college like a normal straight boy? What the hell were you doing anyway?"

Kris twists around, trying to loosen Adam's hold; it's not a surprise that he can't. He's been trying for years and hasn't managed yet. "I--studied? Got drunk? Picked up girls? What _straight boys do_."

"Drunken roadtrips to make out with your male friends and blame it on the alcohol?"

Sometimes, Kris wonders about Adam's porn. Like, a lot. "I never did roadtrips for gay sex, what did you--" Kris stops himself. Burning Man, right. Adam's context is very contexty indeed.

Adam looks at him with suspiciously sharp eyes. "Seriously, you never did a roadtrip in college?" Abruptly, he pushes off the couch; unbalanced, Kris catches himself on one arm, watching Adam scoop up his phone and dial a number. "We have to change that."

Kris opens his mouth, but he's a little too slow; Adam straddles his lap and kisses him, druggingly slow with the taste of sleep-deprivation and adrenaline both. It goes on until abruptly, Adam pulls back, head tilted, leaving Kris vaguely aware something really tragic is about to happen but not really caring all that much. "Yeah, no, not important. No. Shut up, thanks. We're going to South by Southwest. Tell me how we can do that and not like, pull a Princess Diana on the freeway? Call me when it's set up." Shutting off his phone, Adam runs a thoughtful thumb over Kris' lower lip. "We should start packing."

Kris licks his lips, catching Adam's thumb, and nods. "Yeah, okay."

* * *

It happened like this: Kris Allen went down on his knees in a backroom of a forgettable West Hollywood club where boys like him go to do just that. He closed his eyes, lips burning from a stranger's kiss, and opened his mouth to a stranger's cock, shivering and aching and finally knowing what it was he'd been wanting so badly. It wasn't special and it wasn't unique except in all the ways that it should have been and in all the ways it actually was. He wasn't scared when it started or when it ended. All he remembers is how it felt to finally be _sure_.

This is Adam, though.

Adam says: _You met me there. It was just to talk. I watched you drink, then I watched you dance, then I touched you because I couldn't stop myself, not anymore. Anyone would understand that. People do stupid things when they're in love._

Adam grins at him, mouth swollen red, stretching him out on the bed, fingers tangled between Kris' above his head.

He says: _This is what happened that night._

"We left after that," Adam says, curling his fingers around the headboard and letting go. "I'd waited for this for years; I took you home with me and asked if you were sure a thousand times in the car. You didn't talk but you nodded every time, and that had to be enough; it was enough. Letting you go was the hardest thing I'd ever done; I couldn't do it twice."

Adam kisses him, rough and eager, tongue pushing into his mouth, teeth scraping his lip, burying every sound Kris would make and reminding him of all the ones he already has. Gulping air between long kisses, Kris feels Adam's nails drag down the length of his chest, four bright lines of startling warmth, pulling away to lick down his throat, leaving the outline of his teeth in Kris' collarbone, his shoulder, above his nipple, hard and a little mean, low on his stomach to make him gasp, shocked. He spreads his legs, hearing the wet sound of Adam slicking his fingers, dragging them over his cock and then back up, an awful, wonderful tease, Adams' jeans rough against his thighs as he looks up, smudged and flushed and bright, like hot stage lights on a hundred states and the longest LA summers and that moment after a performance ends, adrenaline-hot and riding the edge of mania like he'll never come back down.

"I took you to bed and asked one more time," Adam breathes against his mouth. "Are you sure? This time, I needed to hear your answer."

Kris licks dry lips, tasting Adam there, tasting him everywhere, soaked into his tongue and his mouth and his skin. His voice breaks a single syllable into two: "Yes."

Adam smiles, slow and maybe shocked and like he didn't know the answer to a question he never thought to ask, cupping his face and kissing him, gentle on his bruised lip and asking, asking, asking with every soft kiss, and Kris says yes with his tongue and with his fingers and with his lips. Yes, of course. It's not even a choice. It never was, not for me.

"Then I sucked your cock."

Kris manages one belated breath before Adam moves, swallowing him with that easy experience like it's nothing at all. Adam's fingers push new bruises into his hips to hold him down for this, blue eyes watching Kris fall apart beneath his mouth and under his hands. Fingers tangled in Adam's hair, silky against his skin, Kris gasps into the ceiling, the slow heat flaring into something irresistible and unstoppable, low in his belly, heavy, pushing him back into the mattress. He catches his breath at the push of two fingers inside him, slick and strange and _good_, better than he's done with himself, but he can't move more than Adam lets him, and that's not much at all.

He thought of this in the Idol mansion with Adam three feet and a different life away, in bunk beds and hotel rooms and sprawled on couches, before he knew how to ask and before Adam could have known he could take. He thought about it before he knew what he wanted, only that there was something there to _want_, something new rearing sluggishly to life, not surprised, not surprised at all, _waiting_.

"…please, please, please," and that's him, that rough-low-broken voice, dirty-pretty like after he's sung for hours and forgot to stop, how Adam would look at him after, and he can feel Adam shiver, fingers clenching tighter on his hip before a third finger stretches him open wide, God, "_Adam_."

Pulling off with a slow, wet sound that makes Kris twist helplessly, Adam licks his lips and shoves off his own jeans _finally_, all that bare, gorgeous skin, then he's pushing up Kris' thighs, still opening him up with those amazing fingers and driving him insane. Kris wants to cry when he pulls them out, even if it's just to grab a condom, because even those seconds last forever.

Adam kisses his eyelids, his forehead, brushes his lips over his ear, murmuring, "Kris," filthy-sweet, cock pushing just behind his balls and nowhere near where it's supposed to be. Half-folded and shaking, Kris tries to form words and forgets what they were before they can find air. Adam reaches down, and Kris feels the blunt first push, almost too slow and burning just a little. "That's it," Adam says, catching his hand and sucking a kiss into his wrist, dragging his teeth up to the heel before lacing their fingers together and pinning his hand to the pillow. "Open up for me," Adam says, pulling back enough to watch his face, twisting his hips just a little, and Kris feels his body giving way, easing inside.

"Adam," he whispers, digging his nails into the broad stretch of back, arching up into the endless burn. "Adam, _fuck me_."

Adam's fingers tighten almost painfully around his, then he draws back, and _holy fucking shit_….

It hurts and it's incredible; his still-wet cock aches against his belly, sensitized with each bare brush against Adam's bare stomach, wiry hair like an endless rough tease. Adam steals his breath with every stroke, catching every half-uttered word that's Adam's name, no different from the crowds at every performance chanting it like a prayer, abject adoration and devotion and endless, aching _want_ that won't ever be slaked, only eased to a softer burn. Adam mouths his shoulder, licking over skin still raw from his teeth, gasping softly and then reaching down and wrapping a tight hand around Kris' cock and looking up, staring into Kris' eyes to say, "I want to see you come."

It's been building too long to stop even if he wanted to--minutes, hours, weeks, _years_\--and with a gasp, Kris feels the first tingling tremors in his fingertips, shuddering over the surface of his skin and hot and heavy down his spine, Adam breathing, "Come on, baby, give it up for me," and Kris does, like the command is hardwired to his cock.

He may be screaming, but he can't hear it; Adam licks open his mouth and swallows the sound, shifting into something rougher and harder, bending him in half and coming while Kris is still shaking from the aftershocks.

There's no way his body can keep this position forever, but a part of him wants to try anyway. Slowly, slowly, Adam pulls out, kissing an apology against his sternum when he catches his breath. There's a sound like a condom being tossed somewhere in the vague direction of a trash can, then Adam curls up around him, fitting them together effortlessly, perfectly. Kris closes his eyes, burying his face in warm, sweaty skin and Adam's chin rests lightly in his hair, fingers stroking the length of Kris' back.

"That's how I remember it," Adam says, so softly it's barely a whisper.

Kris nods slowly; he thinks now that's how he'll remember it, too.

* * *

In the end, their combined ninja skills get them away from the house when dawn barely breaks the skyline white and golden-pink; how, Kris isn't sure and Adam looks too shocked they pulled it off to want to ask. Sneaking down the road eight blocks, they find the car waiting, keys in the ignition and a pile of papers on the seat.

This is such a bad idea, Kris thinks, staring at the open passenger door for a second. Such a bad idea. It really can't be worse.

Adam turns him around and pushes him back against the car, licking the tip of his nose playfully. "Don't worry. I have a plan."

It's not that he didn't know Adam was insane. It's just maybe he doesn't really care. "I'm not letting you do this."

Adam grins, hands on his hips, kissing him lightly before leaning back, pleased the way he always is when he knows he's right. "Then I'll just have to convince you." With a slap on the hip, he steps away. "Get in the car."

* * *

Fourteen hours later, they arrive in Austin, though to Kris, it feels so much shorter. It's the first time he's slept so long in weeks. Waking groggy, Kris stares down the length of Congress, blocks away from the end of SXSW and a media circus like the end of the world, or at least, a temporary cessation of the world wide web.

"I've heard good things about La Quinta," Kris says a little numbly, rubbing his eyes blearily.

"Too late to--" Adam says cheerfully before breaking off. "Oh thank _God_." Making a hard right onto Cesar Chavez, Adam pulls over less than a block in and cuts the ignition before scrambling for change for the parking meter. Kris rolls his eyes, staring at his worn sneakers for a second before watching Adam climb out to look at the existence of Starbucks in something like joy. "Come on."

Kris bites his lip; this still isn't a plan. He's not sure what you call potential career suicide by media, and even now, maybe, maybe, maybe--

Abruptly, his door opens, and Kris stares up at six-one feet of rockstar, the too-pretty face of a superstar with Adam's smile stretching glossy lips, leather and warm cotton and silver chain, his best friend, once-upon-a-time rival, and very possibly the love of his life. "You know," Adam says, crouching to rest his chin on one purple-nailed hand, black and silver-lined eyes narrowed in thought, "it's way too late to back down now."

Kris licks his lips; he's left a woman and a marriage, a family and a life scattered as casualties in his wake. Adam being willing to become one doesn't mean Kris should let him. "Adam--"

"You made me wait," Adam says softly. "And you made me hope. And maybe somewhere in there you broke my heart. You owe me a lot, but I'll start with this." Grinning, he leans forward, catching Kris' chin and rising to his feet, pulling Kris with him. "Get out of the car now so I can get a fucking latte."

Kris blinks up at him as the door closes from a satisfied-sounding kick. "It's kind of hot when you do that."

"I thought you'd like it." Even on a Sunday, there are enough people around to notice Adam being Adam in the world. That's not something you can miss. Following him up onto the sidewalk, Kris grabs for his wrist before he gets inside; once Adam finds caffeine, it may be a while before Kris can get his attention again.

"Adam--"

Adam hesitates, looking down at him thoughtfully, then cups his cheek, and God, there are people watching, and they may not know what they're seeing, but any moment, someone will.

"It'll be okay," he says, with a little careless shrug that's anything but. "Everyone knows that people do stupid things when they're in love."

Adam's ridiculously tall anyway; the boots don't help. Pushing up on his toes, Kris pulls him down into a kiss, slow like in the motel, deep like they're fucking, and from the corner of his eye a camera phone comes out, right on schedule.

He hopes they _break_ the fucking internet.

Pulling back, Kris nods jerkily, purple-nailed fingers curling through Adam's and staring into bright blue eyes that look at him like he can see the rest of their lives already, like maybe he always has. It's going to be amazing. "I love you, too."


End file.
